


Winter Wonderland

by Astrophilla, sunshinewinchesters



Series: Destiel Christmas Advent Calendar 2015 [19]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 25 Days of Christmas, 25 Days of Destiel Christmas, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Christmas, Destiel Advent Calendar 2015, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Castiel, Worried Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:49:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astrophilla/pseuds/Astrophilla, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinewinchesters/pseuds/sunshinewinchesters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean wakes up dangling upside down from a pine, and the last thing he remembers is arguing with Sam about driving Baby through all of this snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

> Written by Astrophilla  
> Beta'd by sunshinewinchesters
> 
> Type: Canonverse AU, established Castiel/Dean
> 
>  
> 
> **The nineteenth installment of our Destiel Advent Calendar!**

When Dean came to, all he could see was white. The pendulum swinging of his body was making him nauseous, and the brutal wind was biting at his face. And his ankle was on fire. There was something tightly wrapped around it, something cutting into him, pulling it, and before Dean could even properly process the fact that he was fucking hanging from it, the pain swallowed him and he fell back into unconsciousness.

_“Yosemite? Are you kidding me?” Dean grumbled._

_“Yeah, I thought so too,” Sam shrugged, “pretty far out from their usual grounds but the report sounds close to the mark. I guess we prepare for wolves and shifters, but people have been taken rather than mauled, and there haven’t been any hearts left—”_

_“Yeah, yeah, less of the mauled bodies and hearts while I’m eating breakfast. Goddamn, even the monsters are taking vacations now. Wendigos in California,” he grouched, piling his pancakes into his mouth as quickly as he could. If he was driving halfway across the country, he was at least finishing his damned breakfast._

“What is this, fucking _I Am Legend_?” Dean croaked when he awoke sometime later, his vision swimming, throat burning from the cold. “Let me go, you sonovabitch!”

The more he thrashed, the more the snare tightly encasing his sprained ankle burned. At least he could still feel something. The rest of him had gone numb with cold, or the loss of circulation that brought him back to agonizing consciousness. 

And fuck, it was getting worryingly hard to breathe. 

“Sam?!” he yelled out with all the strength left in him, but the sound was swallowed up in the endless expanse of white around them. Darkness was creeping at the edges of his vision once more, but he fought it this time, only dipping out momentarily.

_“This can’t be a wendigo, they’re ancient,” Dean huffed. “We’d have heard significant reports of missing people way before now, they don’t just pop out of nowhere. Who the hell gets lost in a national park and decides to eat their pals?”_

_Sam frowned, depositing his book on the dash. “I don’t know, gold miners from way back, maybe?”_

_“Fantastic. Christmas this year is gonna be spent ganking Yosemite Sam, huh?”_

With a pained gasp, he wrenched his eyes open. He was pretty sure he was starting to go snow blind, but as far as he could see there were no creepy assholes lingering below him— the fucker must be leaving him there until he was on the brink of respiratory failure, so he could pick Dean up when he fancied a snack. Hell no was Dean being some wendigo’s Lunchable. 

“C’mon Dean, get it together,” he mumbled to himself, though he was starting to lose feeling in his mangled ankle now, and that was not a good sign. 

All he needed to do was to lift up his arms from where they hung limply above his inverted head, to reach the weapons he had strapped to his thigh. He couldn’t remember if he’d picked up a bowie before they left, but he hoped to God he had. 

After a few attempts at a steadying breath, he fought the exhaustion in his drained arms in a desperate attempt to move them. It burned like crazy, and he bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from screaming out as the blood-starved muscles in his back and shoulders wildly protested. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he ground out through gritted teeth, eyes filling with tears, until his arms were by his sides. 

He felt around with stiff, unfeeling fingers, but the strap at his thigh was empty. Shit. His breath was coming in rapid, weak pants now, and no, he wasn’t panicking, it was just the blood pressure in his brain, but how the _hell_ was he gonna get out of this.

He was hanging from a goddamn fucking ponderosa pine. This was not how Dean Winchester was gonna go.

There was a rifle strapped to his undamaged right ankle. He knew this. He never left the house without it. Another cautionary look down, or up—and damn, Dean never realized how bad vertigo could be until you’re hanging twenty feet above the ground by your fucked up foot—and he could just about make out the flare gun on the ground, half covered by snow. He must have dropped it when the snare had pulled him up, but it was of no use to him now. 

He needed to reach the rifle. 

His first attempt at hauling his upper body towards his legs was pathetic at best, and fucking agonizing. His muscles felt atrophied as he tried to ab crunch his way up, and the tugging on his bad ankle was torture, but on his fifth attempt his fingertips were only a few inches away from the holster, and shit, he was so close— 

“Please, please,” he begged no one in particular. 

With a desperate, adrenaline-fueled final attempt, his abdominal muscles locked in place and he was able to just about reach his fingers around the grip. 

Okay, Winchester, you’ve got the gun. Now what do you do?

He could wait for Sam, but he had no idea where the fuck he was, lost somewhere in a thick copse of the blizzardous national park. For all he knew, his little brother could be in trouble too. And chances were, Yosemite Sam was gonna find him before the other did.

He couldn’t keep swinging himself up, he’d used all his energy reaching the gun, and now his oxygen-starved muscles had reached the point of exhaustion--he could barely raise his arms any longer to use the gun. So he needed to think fast. 

Twenty foot drop below him, but no other way down. He was gonna have to shoot the rope and pray that the snow below him was a thick enough powder that the fall wouldn’t kill him. But first he needed to get himself swinging, because otherwise, he was gonna land on his head.

With a muffled cry as the rope cut into his ankle, he tried to create the momentum to get him moving once more, thrashing his arms as much as he could. By the time the rope was swinging, he’d almost forgotten what he was trying to achieve. 

“Gun,” he told himself weakly, shaking away the haze in his vision. God, he was getting so fucking dizzy. And tired. Maybe he could just…

No. With trembling, burning arms, he aimed the rifle at the rope tying him to the tree, and fired. 

The sound of the shot was swallowed up like his cries had been, ricocheting off of the trees and into the distance. 

“Fuck,” he groaned. He had no idea how many rounds he had left, but it probably wasn’t many. Shooting through a swinging rope whilst upside down and on the brink of unconsciousness wasn’t putting the odds in his favor, either.

A second shot skimmed the edge of the rope, but it was thick stuff, the real deal, and it wasn’t breaking. 

Dean was starting to get desperate, pulse skyrocketing as his heart attempted to pump what little blood it had left around his body.

“C’mon, last try,” he gasped, contracting his ab muscles and pulling himself up for a clear shot. As he pulled the trigger, several things happened at once, too fast for his brain to keep up with. There was a deafening bang as the gun discharged, jolting his burning arms. There was the tearing of fibers as the bullet hit its target, almost entirely splitting the rope. There was the deep crack of the bullet lodging itself in the ponderosa. And, before he could process it, the final few strands holding the rope together snapped, and he was hurtling to the ground.

_“Oh hell no. Nuhuh.”_

_“Dean,” Sam glared. “It’s the law. I’d rather not skid off the road and fall down a cliff.”_

_Dean crossed his arms, resolute. “Sam, these tires are in mint condition. Do you know what snow chains will do to them? No. Baby didn’t do anything to deserve this.”_

_“What else do you suggest, hiking all the way there?” Sam said, exasperated. “The missing people reports are from way down in the valley, it’ll take us days on foot. More people might die.”_

_With that, his brother threw open the car door and quickly shut it behind him, before and of the snow falling outside could get in. Dean scrambled out to follow him._

_“What—where are you going?”_

_Sam brandished the black bag in his hand as an answer and made his way to the front of the car. Dean’s eyes widened as he realized what the bag contained, and he rapidly shook his head. “I said no!”_

_“Dean,” Sam snapped. “Shut the hell up. We’re putting the chains on.”_

_“God damnit,” Dean growled, climbing back inside the car. “You wreck my tires, I wreck your face, Sam.”_

He came to with a grunt, blind to anything but white. His head was bleeding, that much he could tell from how the steady stream further obscured his vision, coloring the snow beneath his face with bright crimson. 

His peripheral was fucked to hell, but a lifetime as a hunter had given him some extra senses. Blind or not, he knew when something was coming for him. Whatever it was, probably the wendigo, was creeping through the bushes to his right, scoping out his now-damaged dinner. Dean tried to stand, but it was futile, and he collapsed back onto the snow with a weak groan as the monstrous figure approached.

No, no, no. He was not gonna go like this. He needed to find Sam, and get back to Cas, and—and shit, Cas. He hadn’t even said goodbye, hadn’t got the chance to look into those beautiful eyes one last time, to kiss the breath out of those plump, pink lips. No. He wasn’t gonna let a hungry miner take that from him.

There was something cold and hard beneath his face, and he fought to focus his eyes long enough to work out what it was. With a small, last ditch thrill of hope, he realized it was the flare gun. He struggled to unbury it, digging it out with hands he could no longer feel, and dragged himself up long enough to put his finger on the trigger. He had no idea, he could barely see an inch in front of his face, and that inch was swirling nauseatingly, but he did what he always did in hopeless situations—he aimed, prayed, and shot. The recoil from the flare sent him sprawling backwards. With a crack, his head made contact with the robust trunk of the tree, and he was out.

*-*-*

“Dean?” 

The sounds swirled around in the darkness, and he felt like he should recognize them, but he couldn’t… quite… 

“Dean. _Please._ ” 

Desperate. Terrified. 

There was another voice, one he knew like the back of his hand, but still it could not penetrate the wall surrounding him. “Cas, do something! Fix him up with your mojo, come on!”

“I can’t, if I raise his body temperature too quickly, his heart will fail.”

Dean let out a low, pathetic whine when his hurting everything was jostled, but before long, he was lost once more into the darkness. 

_The sheets around their bodies were tangled and soiled, but it was warm, so warm, and the room was filled with the most beautiful smell of sex, and Cas, and Dean could have died happy right there, stretched out across the angel’s lithe body like a contented cat. Until Castiel spoke._

_“My presence is required in Heaven for the next several days,” he hummed, fingers carding through Dean’s hair. “But I shall always return to you.”_

_Dean’s eyes slipped shut with a sigh, heart in his throat. “Yeah, okay.”_

_Sam and Dean had had enough Christmases alone. What was one more?_

He shifted as he woke, and instantly regretted the decision when every muscle in his body throbbed. His head was pillowed against something firm, but almost familiar, and the smell, god, he fucking loved that smell. 

“Dean. Why didn’t you call me?”

Dean struggled to open his eyes. He was being gently rocked, they were moving somewhere, but he hardly cared at all. Above him were those beautiful, bright blue eyes, and his chapped lips stretched into a smile. 

“Cas,” he sighed. Breathing was easier now.

“Why didn’t you call,” the angel persisted, frantic, bundling Dean tightly to his chest.

Dean made an indistinct noise, throat paper dry. “You ‘ere busy.”

“I am _never_ too busy for you,” Castiel growled, but the harsh tone had little to no effect. 

“You’re funny,” Dean smiled, cuddling as close to the warmth as he could with muscles that refused to cooperate. “And god, so beautiful. ‘ve I ever told you you’re beautiful?” 

The angel blinked down at him, but Dean couldn’t comprehend why he had tears in his eyes. “You ridiculous, self-sacrificing man.” 

“You have snow in your hair.” Dean snickered weakly. “My snow angel.”

His head lolled. The darkness crept in, and he was really starting to get sick of this. 

“‘M I dead?” he asked, struggling to open his eyes now. Castiel was there, he didn’t have to worry about that anymore. He could just let his eyes fall shut, let his head flop against Castiel’s shoulder, and give in. 

When Dean came to for the final time, it wasn’t the easy slide into consciousness. Nope, he woke suddenly, his body jumping right back into fight-or-flight, muscles all tensing at once. And hell, did he regret that.

“Ah,” he whined, jamming his eyes tightly shut.

“Don’t move,” a soothing voice commanded him, fingers threading tenderly through his hair. “I haven’t been able to fully heal you yet.”

Hesitantly, he cracked his eyes open. “Cas?” 

“I’m here,” the angel said, fingertips raking rhythmically across his scalp. “You’re okay.”

“Where’s Sam?” Dean asked, fear creeping into his voice. Castiel hushed him, cradling him closer to his chest and pulling the comforter—where did that come from?—up higher around their shoulders.

He was draped across Castiel’s lap, held tightly to his chest like a child, but he could feel the mattress beneath them. They were back at the bunker.

“He’s fine,” Castiel reassured him, “he’s in the kitchen making soup. I’ll inform him that you have woken up soon.” 

Dean let out a heavy exhale, collapsing back onto the angel. “Crap. What happened?” 

“You were foolish and careless, chose to split up from your brother in the middle of a blizzard, and were subsequently captured by an intelligent wendigo,” he deadpanned, eyes hard.

Dean frowned up at him. “What’s wrong, why are you mad?”

Castiel’s lips tightened into a harsh line. “You were nearly killed, Dean.”

“That’s sorta in the job description,” Dean attempted to shrug, reaching up to brush his fingers against Cas’ stubbled jaw.

“Do not joke,” Castiel snapped, turning his face away.

Dean’s eyes widened, and his aching arms went around the distraught angel, pulling him back. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, buddy.”

“No, it’s not,” Castiel said, voice low and breaking. “I wasn’t even aware you were hunting, let alone fighting for your life until I heard Sam’s frantic prayers. Can you imagine what that did to me?”

“I’m sorry, Cas. I didn’t mean to worry you.” 

“Why didn’t you call me?” he said quietly, heartbreak on his face. “Nothing is more important to me than you. Nothing.”

“I… I don’t wanna be a burden,” Dean admitted. “I know you’ve got shit of your own going on upstairs, you don’t need to deal with mine too.”

“Dean,” Castiel breathed, eyes watering. “You are never a burden to me. You never will be.”

The fingers playing with Dean’s hair moved until they were pressed to his forehead, stroking ever so gently across the broken skin there. A rush of grace flooded through him, soothing the lasting aches and pains in his body, and the throbbing in his head abated until he was nothing but comfortable and warm. His ankle was no longer bent into an unnatural position, the chafing from the ropes healed entirely. 

“Yeah. Thanks, Cas,” Dean smiled sadly. “You heading back upstairs now?”

Castiel shook his head, arms tightening around Dean’s waist. “No. Strategizing can wait.” 

“Cas, no,” Dean tried to protest, but the angel cut him off with a swift kiss.

“I love you,” he declared quietly as he pulled away, “and I’m sorry it required a monster almost taking you from me to realize that my priorities were wrong. You could not make me leave now if you tried.” 

Dean’s face softened, and his lips curled up into a small smile as Sam pushed his way into the room, holding a tray laden with soup. 

Having overheard the end of the conversation, his little brother grinned. “Awesome, we have enough food for three! This is gonna be the best Christmas; we can decorate the place, I saw some fairy lights in the storage rooms downstairs. Oh, and it’s still snowing, we can have snowball fights—” he said with childlike excitement, but Dean interrupted with a swift shake of his head.

“Count me out, Buddy the Elf,” he shuddered, ducking back under Castiel’s arm and cuddling up to his side as Sam handed them the deliciously smelling soup. “I don’t ever wanna see snow again.”


End file.
